The equation was simple. If England beat San Marino by seven and Holland failed to win in Poland they qualified for the 1994 World Cup, second in their group behind Norway. At kick-off on 17 November 1993, it seemed difficult but not impossible; 8.33 seconds later, the dream was over as San Marino took the lead. It was not mathematically impossible for England to qualify from there but psychologically, morally, it became so.

Davide Gualtieri's goal, jabbed in after Stuart Pearce's fluffed back-pass had exposed David Seaman, remains the fastest in World Cup history. England came back to win 7-1 and with the Dutch winning 3-1 in Poznan it did not matter that they fell one goal short of the required margin. That goal, though, stands as a defining image of an era of haplessness for English football: if England could go behind to a minnow that had been a Uefa member for only three years, it felt, there really was no hope. Graham Taylor resigned six days later. Gualtieri works in an electronics shop now, as he has for 16 years, the mop of dark hair long since replaced by baldness. He still seems bemused by his place in World Cup history and laughingly insists that he doesn't count up to nine at the beginning of matches just to make sure his record isn't taken.

"Sometimes I go on YouTube and watch it – I still had hair, which cheers me up," he says. "And I also have a VHS of the game. More often than you'd think there are fans who come into my electronics shop and ask for autographed memorabilia. Sometimes it's a photo, other times it's a shirt. So much so that I've run out of them. I'll have to ask the San Marino FA to send me some more over."

Earlier this year the federation honoured him with a plaque at a lavish ceremony, while in 2000 he was given a silver medal by San Marino's Olympic federation. They may have gone on to lose the game but that goal remains a high point of San Marino's sporting history.

It isn't only San Marinese and English fans who remember Gualtieri. "There are some guys from Eastern Europe who send me letters and emails asking for autographs," he says. "I think that goal acquired more value also because Hakan Sukur scored a goal after 10 seconds for Turkey in 2002 against South Korea, and that was the fastest goal ever in a World Cup finals."

At the time, Gualtieri didn't quite realise what he'd done. "We were playing in Bologna at Stadio Renato Dall'Ara for safety reasons because hooliganism was still a big problem," he says. "I didn't realise how quick it was. It was only after the game when all the journalists poured down on me that I realised how historic it was. With all the tension we felt in a game of that stature my mind was never going to be good enough to acknowledge immediately what had happened."

The start of the game came in even more of a rush because he had missed the match at Wembley nine months earlier, when England had won 6-0. "It was a real pity because I missed that just because I was in bed with flu," he says. "And it was a shame to miss the away game in Scotland [in 1995], although in that case I had completely torn apart my groin."

Gualtieri sought out Pearce at the end of the game and swapped shirts with him. "I still have to frame it, but it will soon be hung on my wall along with dozens of others – Finland, Poland, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland," he says.

"I think that Pearce and the rest were more angry with each other. Tension was really high because they had to win by a seven-goal margin, hoping that Poland did the job against Holland. After the game, some relatives that used to own a restaurant in England sent over a copy of the Daily Mirror to me with the front cover that read 'End of the World' with my picture on it."

That was overstating it but for Taylor and that generation of English football Gualtieri's goal was the end, and an ignominious curtain fell over a sorry period of the national team's history.